How do you overcome overwhelm?
Whether you are a solopreneur, small business owner, or employee, it’s likely that you have felt overwhelmed with too much to juggle on your to do list.
I’m going to let you in on some secrets that I share with my business coaching clients on how to focus your time, be more productive, and get more things done.
1 – Clear the decks. This is a skill I learned while still in the corporate world from David Allen in his book, “Getting Things Done.” At the beginning of the week, do a brainstorm of all the tasks that you need to get done – both personal and professional.
Include big projects, phone calls, meetings to schedule, and even personal errands. Everything that floats around in the back of your mind or on the many post-its covering your desk goes on this list.
Categorize your tasks. Projects will have their special steps and times that you will block out to get the steps done. Label other tasks like writing, social media, phone calls, client meetings, emails, etc. so they can be batched later.
2 – Block your calendar – When you are overwhelmed with too many things to do, you can end up jumping from one task to another. When you move from making a phone call to doing social media post, to writing an email then back to project work, you lose valuable momentum. Studies show that when you jump from one task to another you can lose up to 40% productivity!
In my coaching practice, I advise clients to block their calendars by activity – there’s time to focus on client engagement, business development, social media marketing, writing, etc.
In my case I block my calendar to see clients on Tuesdays and Fridays. Wednesdays and Thursdays are business development days and I block Wednesday mornings for writing. Mondays are about working ON my business – which includes my strategy for the coming week, month, year. I schedule meetings with my virtual team and ensure everyone’s focus is on track.
3 – Map your tasks in a priority grid. Each Monday I take a page out of Stephen Covey’s book, The Seven Habits of Highly Successful people and I complete a priority grid. All of the tasks that are urgent and important go into the upper left quadrant. Those are the ones that I tackle first. Those are are my income generating activities. As those get complete, I tackle less urgent priorities that are also important. Items move up the grid week after week so that I am always assured of making the best use of my time.
4- Batch your tasks. For greatest efficiency, batch your tasks. You can be up to 40% more productive if you batch similar tasks together. Make phone calls in one block of time, do emails in another, client meetings, marketing activities – you get the idea.
Last Friday I batched my time writing video scripts for new offerings. Batching that task got me focussed on the sequential message I wanted to deliver so that I didn’t start and stop and have to refocus on the message again later.
On Saturday – because it was quiet – I shot four new video segments in 3 hours, then sent them off to my team for editing and embedding on our web pages. It felt great to be so productive in such a short amount of time – especially with something I used to agonize over and have a ton of resistance about doing! The videos were easy, relaxed and I did many fewer takes than usua.
Are you seeing ways you can reduce overwhelm and become more productive in your business?
Make a commitment to apply these to your work week and reply here and let me know if it made a difference for you!
Talk soon,
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